Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War
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70 Cf. Rossetti’s later poem ‘Cassandra’, which details Troy’s terrible fate, and sings of how ‘Troy glows’; see further McGann 2003, 188.
71 It is interesting to note the orientalism implicit in using Cairo as a model for Troy. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of how notions of ‘West’ and ‘East’ have been projected onto the story of the Trojan War.
72 Surtees 1971, 92. For the Aeschylean verse, see Aesch. Ag. 689–90.
73 Bullen 2011, 214 comments on Helen of Troy, showing the queen as responsible for the ‘downfall of a civilization’.
74 On Helen and Homeric insults, see Graver 1995.
75 Swinburne 1875, 99; cf. Spencer-Longhurst 2000, 42, who argues that the painting ‘titillated the sado-masochistic fantasies of Swinburne’.
76 Bullen 2011, 159: ‘the livid colour and frenetic brushwork … combine to create simultaneously feelings of arousal and menace’.
77 Perhaps this image was an inspiration for Yeats’ later poem, quoted above, which asks: ‘What could have made her peaceful with a mind | That nobleness made simple as a fire’. Another clear intertext here is the heroine (who is also named Helen!) of Anne Brontë’s 1848 novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In one memorable section, ‘her fingers trembled with excitement, as she nervously entwined them in the hair-chain to which was appended her small gold watch – the only thing of value she had permitted herself to keep’. Note especially the reference to Helen’s hair jewellery and her gold watch.
78 Donnelly 2015, 10 with n.25.
79 So especially Swinburne 1875, 99 and Spencer-Longhurst 2000, 42.
80 Donnelly 2015, 11, noting the degeneration ‘on the face of a beautiful woman’.
81 Edmunds 2015.
82 References to Helen as the reason for the Trojan War in Iliad: 1.159-60; 3.126-28, 156-57; 4.173-74; 6.344-58; 7.350-51; 9.339; 19.325; 22.114-16; 24.762-74; Odyssey: 4.235-89; 11.438; 14.68-69; 17.118-19; 22.226-30; 23.218-21. For a deconstruction of Helen as the ultimate causa belli, see Herodotus Histories 1.1-5, in which Helen is one of a number of mythical women responsible for inter-continental conflict.
83 For a comprehensive survey of Helen in Greek myth, see Edmunds 2015. Suzuki 1989, 12–17 gives a clear and concise overview of the different metamorphoses of Helen in ancient literature.
84 Blondell 2013, 87–88 and cf. Suzuki 1989, 67.
85 Blondell 2013, 71 cautions against a too-rigid focus on Helen’s status as a victim of divine coercion in Iliad, especially given Helen’s (self-acknowledged) role in the conflict.
86 References to the poem are taken from McGann 2003, 41–43; for commentary, 379. There are good discussions of the poem in Howard 1972, 139–43 and Wasko 1987.
87 For this tradition, which does not occur in Homer, see Maguire 2009, 126–27. The poem is also accompanied by a picture, Troy Town, which depicts Helen offering a cup moulded like her breasts to the goddess, whilst Venus and Cupid look at Helen from behind a curtain; see further
88 On the Adamic associations in the poem, see Howard 1972, 142.
89 Wasko 1987, 336 and cf. already Waugh 1928, 157, noting the ‘hypnotic effect’ of the refrain. On the poem’s ominous attitude towards female sexuality and its connections with other Rossettian poems, such as ‘Eden Bower’, see Howard 1972, 142 Wasko 1987, passim, and Bullen 2011, 214.
90 Howard 1972, 142–43.
91 Cf. Il. 3.442-46.
92 See further Blondell 2013, 54–56.
93 See Blondell 2013, 248 for the portrayals of Helen by Sandys, de Morgan, and others.
94 Smith 1996, 117–21; cf. Wood 1999, 181.
95 Wood 1983, 138–39 and 1999, 215.
96 Wood 1983, 90 notes that Watts had been painting nudes as early the 1840s, and rightly comments on the way that his Thetis anticipates later nudes, such as Frederic Leighton’s Venus Disrobing and Albert Moore’s A Venus.
97 For Leighton’s classical influences, see the contributions of Asleson, Arscott, and Barrow in Barringer and Prettejohn 1999.
98 For contemporary defences of Leighton’s nude, see Wood 1999, 188.
99 Wood 1999, 181 discusses the notable preference for ‘contemplation or reflection of events, rather than the events themselves’.
100 The bibliography on the changing roles of women and debates around women’s rights in the nineteenth century is vast, and includes: Purvis 1995, Caine 1997, 88–130, Smith 1998, Gleadle and Richardson 2000 and Gleadle 2001.
101 Smith 1998, 7–16.
102 Caine 1978.
103 On Rossetti’s women as precursors to the ‘the endless femmes fatales of Art Nouveau’, see Wood 1999, 149; cf. Spencer-Longhurst 2000, 42 and Bullen 2011, 158.
104 McGann 2003, 165–66.
105 Cf. Od. 4.140, where Helen refers explicitly to her Muse-like ability to speak falsely or truthfully. On this scene, see especially Blondell 2013, 83–84.
106 Wood 1983, 21: ‘[Rossetti] made little or no contribution to the classical movement, apart from a brief flirtation with classical subjects in the 1860s’.
107 Shortly after Helen of Troy, Rossetti would paint his own nude Venus, Venus Verticordia (c. 1864–1868), for which he published a separate sonnet that sings of her Phrygian boy (i.e. Paris), thus connecting her to Helen of Troy; cf., Bullen 2011, 162. On other nude Venuses in this period, see Smith 1996, 117–34.
108 Wood 1999, 147.
3
Staging Conflict
This chapter focuses on another key theme within both the Iliad itself and the broader Trojan War tradition: conflict. The Iliad explores conflict in many different forms and at many different levels, not only between the Achaeans and the Trojans, but also within communities, and even within the individual psyche. The texts discussed in this chapter are drawn from drama, a medium that has proved fertile ground over the centuries for the Trojan War tradition.1
In the first section, Jan considers Euripides’ Troades (Trojan Women). He examines the play’s focus on the speech of its predominantly female characters. The discussion pivots on Cassandra’s reflections on the war’s true victors, as well as on the famous ἀγών (debate) between Hecuba and Helen. It emphasizes that Euripides’ drama has to be read in its late fifth-century context, at a time of considerable intra-Hellenic strife, as well as factionalism and stasis within Athens. In the second section, Naoíse examines Troilus and Cressida, thought to be one of Shakespeare’s more problematic plays. Like the Troades, this play dramatizes debate and discussion, depicting a Trojan War where the key battles are fought with words. The staging of verbal conflict in this way may have owed to Euripidean examples, but equally could have emerged from a new engagement with the Iliad around the time that the Troilus and Cressida was composed. More than any precursor or pattern, however, it must owe to the particular political circumstances of the time, involving unrest and factionalism in the final years of Elizabeth’s reign.
In both of these plays, the inherently physical medium of drama is used to explore the significance of verbal, rather than corporeal, conflict. As ‘speech acts’ themselves, the debates staged in both the Troades and the Troilus are concerned with the efficacy and reliability of other speech acts. Despite showcasing set-piece debates, however, these plays undermine the status of discussion and the trust placed in words. The victory of reason proves to be empty; promises made in earnest are broken; and reports turn out to be lies. Words, it emerges, are dangerous things, and can cause death and destruction just as surely as the point of a sword. This is true, not only of the Troades and the Troilus, but also of the Iliad itself. Perhaps we should not be so surprised to find wordsmiths such as Euripides and Shakespeare engaging in an Iliadic meditation both on the power of their own art and on the limits of that power.
The pairing of the Troades and the Troilus offers an opposite view from that of the previous chapter. Onc
e more, we present one close reading from a context where the Homeric poems were unquestionably at the heart of the wider Trojan War tradition; and one from a context where the Iliad was known, but where it did not dominate perceptions and understandings of the tradition. In contrast to Chapter 2, however, it is the ancient Greek case which corresponds to the former, and the post-antique case that falls into the latter category. The engagement of each of these texts with the Iliad is therefore conditioned by the status of and knowledge available about the Homeric poems at the time.
Jan: Euripides’ new contests
The surviving corpus of Euripides’ works indicates a deep-seated engagement with the Trojan War. Although many of his plays are no longer extant, we still have either full texts or fragments of his Andromache, Hecuba, Electra, Troades, Iphigenia in Tauris, Helen, Orestes, Cyclops, Iphigenia at Aulis, and Rhesus (though scholars continue to dispute the authorship of this latter play), each of which deals with some aspect of the Trojan War saga (Euripides of course dealt with other mythological storylines in other plays). This discussion will centre in particular on the Troades (Trojan Women), which depicts the fates of leading Trojan women after the obliteration of their city, portraying their mournful reflections on their past (the Trojan War) and their future (enslavement in Greece).2
The Troades is perhaps not obviously Iliadic.3 It concerns events that fall outside the narrative time of the Iliad proper, and commentators have detected only a few instances of specific Homeric phrases or terms in the play.4 Nonetheless, it is certainly Iliadic in that its female protagonists all feature in the Iliad, and in both texts they lament their dismal future following the sack of Troy.5 It evokes the Iliad, too, in its focus on conflict, albeit the Troades offers a new vision of war – fought with words rather than with swords and carried out in dialogue rather than in violence. This vision of conflict, as we will see below, owes greatly to the cataclysmic events of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), not least the Athenians’ slaughter of adult male citizens and enslavement of women and children on the island of Melos in 416 BCE (an event that plays a crucial role in Thucydides’ narrative of the war; Thuc. 5.84–116). What’s more, the play deals with conflicts in words, evoking the important role played by public debate and discourse in shaping the events of the Peloponnesian War and Athenian war policy, as is profoundly captured in Thucydides’ History.
The play originally formed part of a ‘Trojan trilogy’, following on from two other dramas that also dramatized debate and argument in the context of the Trojan War. The first play, Alexander, was concerned with Paris’ backstory, and the surviving fragments include a set debate concerning his re-emergence at the royal court after his childhood exile. The second drama, Palamedes, centred on internal strife in the Greek camp at the end of the war, with Odysseus and Diomedes accusing Palamedes of consorting with the Trojan king Priam.6 Unfortunately, we retain only some fragments of the Alexander, and even fewer of the Palamedes; the analysis here will therefore centre on the third drama in this ‘trilogy’.7
In the discussion that follows, I explore the Troades’ complex relationship with the Iliad and the Trojan War tradition, focusing on its treatment of the theme of verbal conflict and oratorical manipulation. The Troades, performed at the Great Dionysia in 415 BCE, showcased the results of war for a society that had itself been at war for some sixteen years. At this time, however, the most important war in Athens may not have necessarily been the military conflict with Sparta, but rather the ideological and rhetorical battle for control of the polis. The analysis focuses on three key passages of the play. The first is the Trojan princess Cassandra’s sophistic analysis of the Trojan War, as well as her own foreboding comments on the Achaeans’ ghastly homecomings. The second part looks at the first choral ode, in which the Chorus appeal to the Muses in order to sing of the Trojans’ grim destruction following their acceptance of the Trojan horse. The final part of the discussion centres on the blistering ἀγών (a formal set-piece debate) between Helen and her mother-in-law Hecuba – a brutal contest of words that simultaneously highlights the weakness of argument. While Hecuba appears to be victorious in the debate, Euripides’ text indicates the questionable value of her triumph.
Cassandra’s sophistry
Unusually for Euripidean drama, the Troades opens with a dialogue between two gods, Poseidon and Athena.8 The discussion between the two deities leaves it in little doubt that the Achaeans will suffer in the future for specific acts of impiety during the sack of the city (65–66, 73–86; cf. 431–43, 460–61, 1123–30),9 and evokes the various conversations dotted throughout the Iliad in which the capricious gods discuss the fortunes of the poem’s human protagonists. Following this divine prologue, the focus shifts to Hecuba, a forlorn figure who, as in Euripides’ earlier drama Hecuba, mourns her miserable fate (‘Aiai! Aiai! What is there for me that I do not mourn with my song, I for whom country, children and husband are gone?’, αἰαῖ αἰαῖ. | τί γὰρ οὐ πάρα μοι μελέᾳ στενάχειν | ᾗ πατρὶς ἔρρει καὶ τέκνα καὶ πόσις, 105–07) and remains on stage for the entire performance.10 The Chorus, consisting of Trojan women, accompany the fallen queen, and they similarly lament their own miserable fates. They sing too of the various places in Greece that they would prefer to be sent to as slaves, listing Athens as their preferred choice, whilst reviling Sparta, ‘the most hateful home of Helen’ (τὰν ἐχθίσταν θεράπναν Ἑλένας, 211).11 Finally, the herald Talthybius enters,12 enumerating the wretched fates of the leading Trojan women; Hecuba, Andromache, and Cassandra are allotted to Odysseus, Neoptolemus, and Agamemnon respectively.13
This first part of the play therefore comprises one section in which we are told of the future fate of the surviving Achaeans, and one in which we are told of the future fate of the surviving Trojans. What follows this is an extraordinary intervention by Hecuba’s daughter Cassandra, virgin priestess of Apollo, who emerges as a kind of meta-textual critic, weighing up these two fates and passing judgement on them.14 Cassandra enters the stage in a bacchanal state15 and performs a most surprising celebration of her imminent ‘marriage’ to Agamemnon by delivering an elaborate monody that evokes a wedding song (ὑμέναιος):16
μακάριος ὁ γαμέτας·
μακαρία δὁ ἐγὼ βασιλικοῖς λέκτροις
κατὁ Ἄργος ἁ γαμουμένα
Ὑμὴν ὦ Ὑμέναιὁ ἄναξ.
Blessed is the bridegroom,
and blessed am I, to a king’s bed
in Argos that I am betrothed,
Hymen, O lord Hymenaeus.
Euripides, Troades 311–1417
The ironic force of Cassandra’s song soon becomes apparent when she remarks on the ruin that her marriage will bring to those that she and Hecuba most despise (404–05), thus avenging the Trojans (‘I will come bringing victory [νικηφόρος] to the dead, by destroying the house of Atreidae, from whom we perished’, ἥξω δὁ ἐς νεκροὺς νικηφόρος | καὶ δόμους πέρσασὁ Ἀτρειδῶν, ὧν ἀπωλόμεσθὁ ὕπο, 460–61).18 As Dué observes, Cassandra functions here in a manner akin to Athena and Poseidon in the prologue, foretelling the Achaeans’ miserable homecomings.19 Cassandra is offering an assessment of the Trojan War that makes the Greeks the ‘losers’.
Cassandra then continues to deliver a candid, even subversive, monologue, arguing that the Trojans are the war’s true victors (or, at least on showing how Troy is ‘more blessed’ [μακαριωτέραν] than the Achaeans, 365).20 According to Cassandra, the Achaeans could hardly be considered the victors, for they succumbed to all of this bloodshed for the sake of one woman who departed from Greece with Paris of her own accord (a reading that clashes with Helen’s own version of events later in the Troades; see more below). Cassandra continues to pile on reason after reason to bolster her argument on the Achaeans’ relative defeat: Agamemno
n’s destruction of his own family for the sake of a woman that he loathed; the miserable deaths of those Achaean warriors who died away from home without customary burial; and the wretched fates of those back in Greece, many of whom died either childless or after their children, with nobody to attend to the offerings at their tombs.21 These are brilliant, excoriating lines,22 which clearly serve to disrupt the epic conception of a heroic death, recasting martial victory as moral ruin.23 And, while Cassandra’s words fail to convince either Hecuba or the Chorus, who regard her speeches as unbelievable, indicative, as Hecuba states, of an unstable mind (350),24 the external audience, who have already experienced the ‘directorial’ prologue,25 are much more inclined to recognise the truthfulness of her account. The scene thus reinforces a wider motif developed elsewhere in the Troades: the opacity of words and the limits of effective human communication at times of extremity – a motif that speaks as much to a war-ravaged Athens of Euripides’ own day as it does to Cassandra’s.26
Indeed, Cassandra’s reinterpretation of the Trojan War explicitly sets out to redefine epic terminology. She argues that the Trojans should receive ‘the greatest glory’ (κάλλιστον κλέος, 386), having died for their country. Families buried those warriors who died at home, and those who lived got to enjoy the comfort of family life. Hector, moreover, achieved ‘the finest reputation’ (δόξας ἀνὴρ ἄριστος, 395; cf. 1242–45) following the Achaeans’ attack – a subtle revision of the Iliad’s presentation of Achilles as the most glorious warrior.27 Cassandra affords even Paris what is rare praise indeed, since his union with Zeus’ daughter Helen saved him from the ignominy of an unknown wife. For all these reasons, Cassandra concludes that while the wise should always avoid warfare (400, a line that elaborates on Poseidon’s criticism of those who sack cities in the prologue [95–96]), where war is inescapable, ‘it is no shameful crown for a city to die nobly’ (στέφανος οὐκ αἰσχρὸς πόλει | καλῶς ὀλέσθαι, 401–02), while an ignoble death is marked as a humiliation.28